Will Israel's Electric Cars Change the World?

[JStone]

Time Magazine: Will Israel's Electric Cars Change the World?Israel's Electric Car Network: Can It Change the World? - TIME

Shai Agassi, the founder of Better Place, the most sophisticated electric-car enterprise in the world, projects the ebullient confidence of a man facing a giant wave of money. "Within less than this decade the No. 1–selling car in the world will be the electric car," he says. "It's the biggest financial opportunity the world has ever seen. We're seeing a $10 trillion shift in an industry in less than a decade. It's the Internet, and add another zero."

Enter Better Place, the start-up that makes more than electric cars. It also makes an entire infrastructure intended to free automobiles from the stubborn limits of battery life. When the enterprise launches in Israel later this year, drivers should be able to travel anywhere in the country in cars with a battery range of 100 miles (160 km). If they set off from Tel Aviv to the Red Sea, a journey of 200 miles (320 km), they will be able to pull into a Better Place station along the highway and exchange their low battery for a fully charged one. The process should take about five minutes. Otherwise, the car can recharge overnight via a plug that snaps into the little door above the rear wheel where gas would go if the car burned gas. The vehicles can also trickle charge in parking lots where the company's distinctive blue-topped posts are located.

Everything you need to know — the locations of switch stations and charging posts, the number of motorists already there, your own distance from each — is visible on a dashboard GPS screen. Employees have been testing the system for weeks, seeing, for instance, how much juice it takes to drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem with a car full of fat people, a carload of skinny people or just a car. By July, Better Place expects to begin taking individual orders for the Turkish-made Renault Fluence Z.E. (for Zero Emission), a four-door sedan that looks like any other car. Ordinary Israelis could be driving them as early as November.

Cont'd: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2066975,00.html

 

[Mr. H.]

Israel's contribution to the world: The Car Salesman.

 

[eots]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d9oKjOi068&feature=related]The Best Salesman Schwartz.wmv - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

Israel's contribution to the world: The Car Salesman.

Shai Agassi was named by Time Magazine as among the 100 people who most affect our world

You post in a messageboard in your underwear that has 5 readers.

Shai Agassi - The 2009 TIME 100 - TIME

How will you leave the world a better place than you found it? When Shai Agassi was challenged for an answer, he responded with swift action: he resigned from the business-software firm SAP, declining an offer to be CEO, and set out to help the world end its addiction to oil by transforming cars from their climate-changing, lung-polluting, gas-guzzling design to one that's clean, affordable and all-electric. The name for his new enterprise was obvious — Better Place.

O.K., so you've heard of a million such plans before — but none are like Agassi's. Yes, he wants to replace gas-powered cars with electric ones, but he also wants to build an infrastructure in which gas stations are replaced by battery exchanges and charging stations and are everywhere. When you start running out of juice, you just plug in or swap out, and off you go. It's as easy as stopping for gas.

Over the past two years, Agassi, originally from Israel, has been turning his ideas into reality, raising more than $300 million in one of the largest start-up financings in history and partnering with utilities and governments to install the Better Place infrastructure in Israel, Denmark, Australia, the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere.

As head of VantagePoint, the leading clean-tech investment firm, I admittedly have a stake in Agassi's work, since we've invested directly in it. But that also means we undertook a very detailed analysis of it. I remember well our initial meeting (which ran 3 ½ hours) as we went from thinking it wasn't possible to being convinced it would happen — and committing to joining his team.

Agassi is the closest we've seen to a Steve Jobs of clean tech — visionary, technologist, businessman. What's it like working with him? Exhilarating, exhausting, challenging, gratifying. He recently turned 41. Wonder what he'll do after transporting us to a better place?

 

[Mr. H.]

A noble effort, but it will fail for all the same reasons that such projects have been failing in the U.S. for many years.

With Israel's recent discovery of natural gas off its northern coast, the more practical and economic solution is natural gas powered vehicles. I hate to disappoint rabbi car salesman, but he's doomed to failure.


JERUSALEM — Exploratory drilling off Israel’s northern coast this week has confirmed the existence of a major natural gas field — one of the world’s largest offshore gas finds of the past decade — leading the country’s infrastructure minister to call it “the most important energy news since the founding of the state.”

Israel Confirms Major Natural Gas Discovery - NYTimes.com

 

[JStone]

A noble effort, but it will fail for all the same reasons that such projects have been failing in the U.S. for many years.

With Israel's recent discovery of natural gas off its northern coast, the more practical and economic solution is natural gas powered vehicles. I hate to disappoint rabbi car salesman, but he's doomed to failure.


JERUSALEM — Exploratory drilling off Israel’s northern coast this week has confirmed the existence of a major natural gas field — one of the world’s largest offshore gas finds of the past decade — leading the country’s infrastructure minister to call it “the most important energy news since the founding of the state.”

Israel Confirms Major Natural Gas Discovery - NYTimes.com

You forgot to take your manic-depression medication?

 

[Mr. H.]

"See Shai before you buy"!

Shalom

 

[JStone]

"See Shai before you buy"!

Shalom

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqbfVNuiaic&feature=related]Mental Illness - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Mr. H.]

"Don't be shy - buy from Shai"!

Shalom

 

[JStone]

Shai Agassi On CNBC

The Electric Startup - CNBC

 

[Mr. H.]

Shai is barking up the wrong gopher tree.

Convert to CNG

NGVA

CNG Prices & Conversions

 

[JStone]

Shai is barking up the wrong gopher tree.

Convert to CNG

NGVA

CNG Prices & Conversions

You're severely manic-depressive and you post on the internet in your underwear.

Shai Agassi - The 2009 TIME 100 - TIME

 

[JStone]

Interview With Shai Agassi On Charlie Rose Program

Charlie Rose - Shai Agassi, CEO of Better Place

 

[Mr. H.]

You're too Shai Shai.
Hush hush...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILN2eJRZKT0]Too Shy-Kajagoogoo.wmv - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

You're too Shai Shai.
Hush hush...

Shai Agassi sold one of his software companies to SAP for $400 million and was on-track for the CEO position at SAP. Time Magazine calls him a person changing the world

OTOH, you are a manic-depressive with a severe inferiority complex who posts on the internet in his underwear.

 

[eots]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvjbLYXnQmE&feature=related]I'm Jewish And You Know It - Official Parody to Sexy and I know it - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

Warren Buffett Congratulating Israeli Stef Wertheimer, Founder of Iscar, the Hugely Successful Israeli Company In Which Mr. Buffett Has Invested $4 Billion, For Winning The Dun & Bradsteet Leadership Excellence Award

Dun & Bradstreet couldn't have made a better choice and it's particularly impressive when someone is chosen for that award in Israel because the talent level is so high.

If you go to the Middle East looking for oil, you don't need to stop in Israel. But, if you're looking for brains, for energy, for integrity, for imagination, it's the only stop you need to make

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbX60Pktzsk]Warren Buffet on Israel - YouTube[/ame]

Iscar is exceptional. I can give you an absolute, unequivocal answer You can go around the world and it's very impressive when a country of 7 million people turns out a business like this. I haven't seen anything like this in the United States. We were measuring Iscar against everything we see in the world.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7eb-fjQw5k]Warren Buffet in Israel - www.themarker.com - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMKyh8l02tg&feature=related]ISCAR IMAGE-New ver.flv - YouTube[/ame]